


Means of Survival

by jtsbar



Series: Without Names [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jtsbar/pseuds/jtsbar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how some are coping in the aftermath of TGG</p>
            </blockquote>





	Means of Survival

While he stands there, up on the railing, above the cold air and the colder water, he finally wonders if maybe he has a problem. Possibly. Doesn't feel like it really.  
Of course he knows where and when it started. March 31st. Whoever (the police never told him) was in charge had known it was his birthday. About the fourth hour in, he'd been texted congratulations and best wishes and do be sure to enjoy it because, after all, well, one never knows, does one?  
Doesn't take any kind of genius to connect the dots from there to here.

When it was over, he'd gone out to get himself roaring drunk. Repeated that for a while. Friends bought him pints.  
“You had a bloody bomb on you you had a bloody bomb on you you had a bloody bomb on you”  
Nothing to say to that. Bought his own beer when his mates stopped paying (novelty wore off, he was still alive after all).

When he got sick of the hangovers, he went back to his routine. Sort of. In between work and uni (and didn't getting an advanced degree seem more and more the definition of useless) there was sex. A lot of it. More than he'd ever had (his last girlfriend having said he was nicer than she deserved, and then walking out, several months back). Now there was one girl after another. As many as he wanted, and he decided to try wanting rather a lot.  
When that palled (he tired of answering questions about how he'd felt, or not answering – something they seemed to interpret as heroic, of all things), he started walking at night. 

Where before he'd been cautious, now he doesn't bother to even look at street names. Just keeps walking to the next corner and the next, whichever seems, for one slight reason or another, interesting, until he wears himself out enough he thinks he'll be able to sleep once the tube gets him back home. Doesn't worry about getting mugged. Shady-looking blokes follow him a couple times. Soon as he realizes the gray shadows behind him have thickened into human shapes, he turns, stands still, stares into their faces until they leave. He thinks maybe it is the laughing that scares them off. It's wonderful. Exhilarating. Not the scaring them off, but the fact that he doesn't care. That he feels invulnerable. 

Probably a good thing he doesn't own a car. Pressing the accelerator to the mat, somewhere out on an empty curving road – entirely too much of a temptation.

When he sees the small group (outfitted like they were off for a hike in the fens, except for the headlamps) duck into a boarded-up building, he follows them. Joining in, doing what amounts to spelunking under the streets he's traveled all his life (cramped, stinking, dangerous, and then the tunnels opening up to spaces no one's seen for decades) satisfies for a while.

But it's still not enough. It's still not as much. 

And he realizes it has to be just him. Choosing the route. Choosing the challenge. No one else having any say at all in what happens to him.  
He drops out of uni. Resigns from his job. Tells his tutor, his employer, his parents (though really, what was the point), he just needs some time. That's a lie. Exactly what he does have is time. An abundance of it beyond imagining. Days, weeks, months, since he thought he was left with none. Every second full and glistening and a gift - a brightly wrapped box to be filled any way he sees fit.

So here he is on the railing. He does take a minute to consider things. That maybe the falling won't be worth the flying. He doesn't want to die after all. He just wants to prove to himself that he can't.

*****

Lestrade is pleased at the cooperation of the press, keeping the incident quiet, until he realizes it was nothing about his, or Donovan's, powers of persuasion. This realization occurrs shortly after he sends Dimmock over to interview the young man in the observation ward, and his irritated (he's always irritated, Dimmock is, but Lestrade has to admit it's justified this time) colleague reports back that no one with the last name of Colliford is there, nor any records indicating that he ever has been. Apparently the best efforts of New Scotland Yard and the NHS to care for a person who has gone through a horrendous experience and survived, only to succumb (to what, Lestrade asks himself, survival?) have been thwarted by someone. Moriarty? Tying up loose ends? Jesus bloody hell. What about the others? He shouts for his team, starts to mobilize a search (review hospital security, CCTV footage, get Mrs. Lawrence and young James Tilson into protective custody, call Sherlock and John...) when he gets a text. 

No need to organize search efforts. Person in question being cared for at appropriate location. Family will be notified.  
per pro. MH

*****

“You've talked to him before, you know.”  
“Busy.”  
“All appearances to the contrary?” His brother looks tellingly around the room. “That new sonata you're attempting to master? Bach's G minor, I believe?”  
Sherlock presses his fingers in quick, silent, but oh so loud patterns across the neck of the Strad.  
Mycroft smiles. “Consider it an experiment.”  
On whom? John thinks, and he sees the question, and answer, flick across Sherlock's eyes.  
“No,” the bow slashes toward the kitchen, “others in progress.”  
“Simplistic.”  
Sherlock raises his right eyebrow at that, and John sees his internal debate over defending this week's batch of molds and indicative bacterium. Sees him decide not to bother (music and biology are no more than interludes), and close his eyes so as to not give Mycroft the satisfaction of precisely gauging his irritation.  
Vision, however, is not required.  
“Hmm, yes, humans, so much more difficult to understand. Some might say the good ones especially. Criminals are rather predictable, after all.”  
Sherlock huffs out a short derisive laugh. “Not mine.”  
“Perhaps.” Mycroft stands up, says, “John, always a pleasure,” and John, even after rather a large number of interactions with the man, has absolutely no idea why he would think so. The older Holmes turns to his brother. “Sherlock, Moira will send you the pertinent information when," (at the glare, positively glacial, Mycroft shifts his umbrella from one hand to the other and cedes a point) "...if...you change your mind.”

*****

 

When John leaves to take the second of his daily prescribed (and slowly lengthening) walks, he sighs quietly at the sight of the sleek black car waiting around the corner. Of course. There's always more.

“It will be useful.”  
John makes a non-committal "Hmm" as he looks out the window, sees the two usual followers fade back, on their respective sides of the street, into shops that offer unobstructed views of the road and their employer's car. He and Sherlock had both objected strenuously at first, but it became clear that either they accepted Mycroft's selectively unobtrusive (John was sure their presence was made quite clear to whoever Moriarty sent to watch them) bodyguards, or else he and Sherlock would have to resign themselves to following (in John's case read hobbling after) each other to the local Tesco, Bart's mortuary, the physio's office, etc. etc., and they would have surely driven each other mad in less than a week. Better to resent the constant physical reminders of Mycroft's concern. (John had taken to watching the news through the mental filter of how likely each national or world crisis was to divert that over-abundant attention.)  
“This one is unlike Sheila Lawrence.” Mycroft barely shifts his eyes to the driver, and the car pulls smoothly away from the kerb. “Green Park, I believe?”  
John nods, unnecessarily. Of course Mycroft would know where he intended going. When I can get about as usual, John hisses to himself, I shall go somewhere there are no cameras, no minders, no...brothers.  
“Being younger, his personality was not as, fixed, as hers. And he had not the same kind of supports in place. Family. And the like.”  
Family. Yes, well. John has heard of supportive families.  
“So, naturally, I thought of Sherlock.”  
John tries to envision Sherlock providing emotional or psychological support to anyone. Fails.  
Except for himself. Sherlock, for him, is like water in the middle of the desert. Essential. Rare. In very short supply.  
“I would never have taken you for one who was reluctant to share.”  
John isn't bothered by this. It's clear Mycroft is simply indulging in a moment of superfluous argument. Perhaps the foreign ministers of Bahrain and Uzbekistan have both been slightly delayed, and Mycroft has a few unscheduled seconds.  
John turns, and looks right at Mycroft. The elder Holmes has put on the gentle expression of a caring headmaster balancing the needs of all his charges.  
John tries to be the voice of reason, or caution, or something. Again. “I'm concerned about the effect it would have on, I'm sorry, what was his name?”  
“Steven.”  
“I don't see how Sherlock would help him.”  
The mask comes off, and what is left may be, John thinks, rather close to the real person.  
“I'm not at all concerned with helping Steven.”

Of course not.  
Orkney. A fishing boat off Orkney. No cameras there.  
Except Mycroft would probably send a drone to circle overhead.  
“You're concerned with Sherlock.”  
“Of course.”  
“It would be useful for Sherlock.”  
“Therapeutic, actually. In the best case scenario.”  
And we all know how often that happens. My god, the man's becoming an optimist. What will this do to the world order?  
“And for yourself, too, of course, Doctor.”  
John simply stares at Mycroft.  
“Time you started work again.”  
“I'm not a psychiatrist.”  
“No, certainly not. But you have extensive experience dealing, and I must say rather better than predicted, with a man who repeatedly insists on attempting to prove himself invulnerable.”  
Rather better? Than predicted? What kind of algorithms did Moira (today) run on her Blackberry?  
"Our young Mr. Colliford has been attempting the same, though with far less inventiveness. But still, as I said, it may prove instructive.”  
John tries, and fails, to duplicate Sherlock's icy glare. “He, Mycroft, not it. He. A person.”  
Mycroft looked bemused. “Why, yes. As you say.”  
The car glides to a stop. “Ah, we're here. Lovely.” Mycroft waves vaguely in the direction of trees and flowers. “I must have Moira schedule some time outdoors.”  
John expects that's already been calendared. Settling that difficulty about the price of uranium ore whilst admiring the swaths of daffodils. 

*****

By the time John returns, and starts pacing around the sitting room, (not as tired as usual after his walks, either he's made remarkable progress since this morning, or someone gave him a lift part of the way, level of irritation clearly higher than should be remaining after exercise, obvious, not even worth asking what Mycroft wanted), Sherlock is at the desk, hunched over John's laptop, having worked out where Colliford is being held. What they're to do with him once they remove him from Mycroft's appropriate care, Sherlock will leave to John. Not his problem.  
Not while Moriarty continues to evade him (sometimes by no more than seconds, inches, less - the width of a bullet). Not a game any longer. A war of endurance, on the edge of a cliff. Stop it. Metaphor is not useful. Data. Locations. Patterns. Those are useful.  
Mycroft thinks Steven has something to teach him by example. Ludicrous. John will talk his kind of sense into the young idiot. Sherlock knows what his own advice would be. If you're going to jump for the experience of it, make your plans – temperature, tide, currents, river traffic - and then do it quickly. Standing up there on the railing mulling things over just gives passersby time to think they're being heroes. Pointless.  
John is still pacing.  
Sherlock digs the heels of his hands into the bones over his eyes. Nothing. Not a single active case of any consequence, no fresh leads since the crane operator in Aldgate. It has been far too quiet for too long.  
John comes over behind Sherlock, leans against him, and Sherlock presses back into him, the solidity of him. He isn't afraid now that any contact will hurt John. The bones have knit back together. The muscles, tendons, ligaments are healed and now must be used, grow as strong as they were before. Be put at risk again. Inevitable. Necessary. John puts his hands over Sherlock's, moves them gently down from Sherlock's face, puts his own hands beside Sherlock's eyes, presses his fingers around the upper orbital bone, the temporal. After a hesitation, the length of a breath, Sherlock gives himself over to it. Lets John work his fingers through his hair, over the bones of his skull, easing, slowing, and for a brief moment all Sherlock hears is John's heart.


End file.
